


The House that Built Me

by coatofflowers



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Autistic Keith (Voltron), Autistic Pidge | Katie Holt, Autistic/ADHD Lance (Voltron), Background Hunk/Shay, Background Shiro/Matt, Fluff and Angst, Ghost Nonsense, House Spirit AU, House Spirit Lance (Voltron), M/M, Musician Hunk (Voltron), Musician Keith (Voltron), Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Slow Burn, Trans Female Pidge | Katie Holt
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-11-14
Updated: 2016-11-21
Packaged: 2018-08-30 17:04:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,690
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8541472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coatofflowers/pseuds/coatofflowers
Summary: At the urging of his brother Hunk, Keith moves into the attic of a gorgeous century-old house. He's got an eccentric photographer-turned-barber living across the hall, a lovely view of the town cemetery from his bedroom, and nobody around with enough authority to stop him from eating all the caramel candy he pleases. It's the perfect place to work on his new album. And to try to get his life to a point where it's, maybe, approaching something like 'togetherness'.But no matter how much time he may spend here, or how much of his shit might be lying around, this isn't his house. It isn't his housemate's, either. Hell, it isn't even really Shiro's—it belongs to something, someone else. And that someone else might not be all that happy about Keith moving in and changing the dynamic of everything.God damn it, Keith didn't sign up for this shit.(on a brief hiatus - will be updating soon!)





	1. The Anti-Martha Stewart

_Hey Keith!_

_Like I said, I don’t really have “rules” for the house. As far as I’m concerned, it’s yours to do whatever you want with. Still, Pidge said you’re the type of person who likes to have clear expectations set out for him, so I went ahead and made a list of a few things I want you to keep in mind:_

_1.) The appliances are old. The oven has sort of a weird smell to it when it’s left on for a while, but it’s safe to use. Also, the toilet in the attic sometimes keeps running after you flush it—if that happens just take the top off of the back and push on the little ball until the noise stops (scientific, I know. I’m a student, not a plumber)._

_2.) The next door neighbors in the blue house to your right (the Fitzhughs) can get a little cranky if it’s too loud after 9 PM on weeknights. The husband, Mike, gets up early for work. Weekends should be fine if you want to have people over. Just try to hang out inside, not on the lawn—the Fitzhughs are old and they’ll call the police over nothing. They’ve done it before._

_3.) If you think you’re going to have an issue with paying rent on time, just let me know. Pidge tells me you’re a hard worker, and I trust her judgement. Plus, I remember what it’s like to live on your own for the first time. I’ll understand._

_4.)_ _Please _ _don’t go into the basement at night. We have a rat problem down there and they get really active at night, and I wouldn’t want you to get bitten. I would prefer it if you stayed out of there during the day, too, just to be safe. On that note, if you hear anything weird down there, don’t get nervous. It’s just the rats rustling around._

_5.) You probably know this already, but if anything breaks, call Mr. Holt. His number’s on the fridge. He’ll fix it at a discounted rate._

_The next time I’ll be home will probably be around August. I’ll see you then._

 

_P.S. I don’t always have great cell service here, so if you need to get a hold of me but you can’t, just ask Pidge to contact Matt. She somehow seems to have no problem getting in touch with him even when we’re literally in the middle of the Amazon and there shouldn’t be any cell service. I don’t understand that girl and at this point I’m afraid to ask._

 

_Best,_

_T.S._

 

Shiro left the note on a dresser by the front door, angled so it’d catch Keith’s eye when he entered the house for the first time. Hunk had, of course read it too, earlier when he and Shay were there to help Keith move everything in.

“ _Rats_?” Hunk had repeated after reading it over a second time, looking up at Keith anxiously.

“I can handle rats.” Keith had given him a brief pat on the shoulder as he made for the staircase. “Our dorm room last year had fruit flies. Remember that?”

“Fruit flies don’t carry rabies,” Hunk said, still sounding doubtful, but he dropped it when Shay nudged him and reminded him that they were here to move boxes, not to be helicopter moms.

The attic room that Keith is renting is shaped like some weird rhombus, with the bed crammed into an angle against the wall—he’s going to hit his head on the ceiling every fucking morning, he just _knows_ —and not nearly enough wall space for all his posters; thus, he had been forced to decide which ones deserved to be hung up the most. And that, frankly, was the worst thing he’s had to deal with during this whole ordeal. Having to choose between his Tegan and Sara poster (signed in 2008 at a Milwaukee show) and his Garbage poster (not signed, but dammit it was _rare_ ; he’d practically fought Pidge for it) was just flat out unfair.

(Tegan and Sara had won. Hunk was the deciding vote. He was the only person in Keith’s life with a taste in music similar to his own)

During their multiple trips through the house, Hunk hadn’t been able to stop staring at all the homeowner’s _stuff_. Keith couldn’t blame him. Part of him was probably still surprised that Keith had found a place in town at all, let alone a room in such a charming house. At one point, Hunk just stopped in the middle of the study and said, “Good goblins, _look_ at all this stuff. Who _is_ this guy?”

Keith, preoccupied with carrying in his giant stereo, had only given the objects of Hunk’s incredulousness—the framed peer-reviewed article on the wall, the collection of well-kept bonsai trees on the windowsill, the haphazard stack of postcards from locations such as Shanghai and Madrid—a distracted once-over.

“He’s a grad student,” he grunted.

Hunk raised his eyebrows at that and looked, maybe pointedly, at a hanging photograph of Shiro in a tuxedo standing next to Michelle Obama.

“He’s a grad student with an insane life,” Keith clarified, setting the stereo down on the ground.

“No effing kidding,” Hunk said, and yes, he really said _effing_ , because he was Hunk. “Pidge’s loser brother is dating someone like _this_?”

“Pidge’s brother is only a loser compared to you, Mr. Music School. Matt has a full-time job. That’s more than what I’ve got, at least.”

“They sure have a lot of houseplants,” Shay commented from behind them. “The other tenant must water them.” She was shouldering Keith’s record collection, which he knew weighed a shit ton, and not looking even the slightest bit fatigued. (And smiling kindly while she did it—Shay was good. Keith liked Shay.)

Hunk, meanwhile, was still staring around them, shaking his head and decidedly not lifting boxes. “How does he even afford this house?”

Keith turned to head back outside. “I didn’t ask, Hunk. Quit standing around.”

Like any adult, Keith had told himself he wouldn’t feel choked up when they left, but then of course he went ahead and did anyway when Hunk gave him a squeeze and a schmaltzy kiss on the cheek and said _Call me if you miss my cooking._ That had been—maybe about two hours ago, now? And already Keith has resorted to lying on his bed, staring at the ceiling and wanting one of Hunk’s macaroni casserole so badly it _hurts_. He seriously considers calling Hunk and asking him if he can come over to their place for dinner tonight, but— _no, it hasn’t even been twenty-four hours, you have to at least_ try _to be independent, for shit’s sake_.

It’s fine. He can do this. This is the first test of what he's been referring to as _true adulthood._ He’s not even really hungry; he just wants something to occupy himself with, so a snack will do fine. Sighing, Keith leans over the bed and fishes out the giant bag of Cow Tales he’d brought with him (which was already open, since Keith hadn’t been able to stop himself from snacking on a couple while they were organizing the room). He rips one of the little candy wrappers open, maybe a bit too aggressively.

The caramel tumbles out of the wrapper and lands— _plop_ —on the dusty wooden floor. “Fuck,” Keith mutters under his breath. These things weren’t fucking cheap.

He glances up to complain to Hunk about it.

Then he remembers that Hunk isn’t here, and that, in fact, the two now live in separate houses.

“ _Fuck_.”

* * *

 

 

The other tenant is named Corin, or Connor, or something, and Pidge had said he was New Zealand. (“No, he's  _f_ _rom_ New Zealand,” Pidge would correct him. “A _New Zealander_.”) His room’s across the hall from Keith’s, next to the tiny bathroom with a stained tub and tiles the color of a smoker’s teeth, and water that always ran a bit cold.

Keith hasn’t run into the man yet, although he’s stolen glances at the other tenant's room when the door was left ajar. Not much he could see like that—he noticed the walls in there were baby blue, and sometimes there was a pair of nice-looking white bucs on the ground by the door, and sometimes something smelled faintly _nice_ in the hallway, like chemicals and flowers. The idea to peek his head in when he heard the shower going had crossed his mind more than once, but each time a voice that sounded suspiciously like Hunk’s came out of nowhere to chastise him:  _You can’t just do things like that, Keith. It’s weird._

 _Well,_ I’m _weird_ , Keith would shoot back at Thought-Hunk, but he always ended up melting back into his own room before he could snoop. Chalk it up to old habits.

Anyway, it’s fine that he hasn’t met his housemate. Keith sort of likes to imagine that he has the attic to himself. He’s liking the way his room feels, at least for now. _The devil’s in the details,_ Hunk would say. And the details of Keith’s room are meticulously crafted, down to the letter, because he’s neurotic and there’s _nothing wrong with that_ , thank you.

“You could redecorate,” Hunk had said when he was helping him move, holding up Keith’s desert tapestry. It was a remnant from the I-hope-I-get-abducted-by-aliens phase that Keith went through in middle school (which he rather emphatically claimed he was over, despite not really, at heart, being over it). Then Hunk swivelled this way and that, picturing what the old thing would look like hanging from different walls. Keith watched him, eyebrows raised.

“Why would I do that?”

Hunk had turned and blinked at him. “Because . . . it’s a new start? I mean,” he continued quickly when Keith stared, “not that your old room was _bad_ or anything, but it was, like, decorated the exact same way for years? Just with you adding posters and knives occasionally? And now you’re in a _totally new_ space, with new geometry and everything, and it’s kind of like a new chapter in your life, sort of, so it makes sense that you could like—uh, you’re not gonna redecorate at all, are you?”

“Nope,” said Keith, still staring at him like he’d sprouted a third eye.

Hunk had looked at him for a long moment. Then, he heaved a sigh. “Alright, fine. You’re, like, the anti-Martha Stewart and it’s killing my vibe.”

In the end Keith had done exactly what he’d wanted to do with the place—that is, he’d reconstructed his old room from memory. On the bedside table he’s got that tiny brown dish that Hunk had thrown in a high school art class, filled with guitar picks and pins from work. His books—Phillip Levine’s latest, a worn copy of _The Metamorphosis_ , his favorite Emily Dickinson anthology, several early modern collections he’d stolen from Garrison’s library—are stacked spines out and alphabetized on the bookshelf. His record collection fills the bottom shelf, organized by genre. At the moment the knives are still in their boxes, tucked away under the bed, but one of these days he’ll take them out and put them up and display them just as before: by size, by type, and “by aesthetic”, something that Hunk could never understand no matter how many times Keith tried to explain it to him.

It had gotten a little bit ridiculous during the moving process; Keith had literally barked at Hunk several times when he’d tried to set down one of Keith’s things in the wrong place. But, fuck, it’s _perfect_ now, just like Keith likes it. By the door, his newest pair of rollerskates, laces already undone so he can slip into them easier. By the closet, his guitar, tuned and ready to go. Even his clothes are hung up in pretty much the exact same order as he’d kept them in the old house.

Sometimes he just stands in the doorway and looks at everything. He pictures himself in the context of this new room—on the bed with his guitar like he always used to be, notebook open in front of him. Sometimes he pictures Hunk, too, in his usual spots at the foot of the bed or cross-legged on the floor, bobbing his head and humming, feeling whatever melody Keith’s playing.

He shouldn’t do this, he knows. Hunk isn’t going to be here that often, because he’s a college student with a job and a girlfriend and a life that just generally doesn’t really revolve around Keith. He’ll need to get used to going weeks without seeing him. That’s the whole reason why he was _here_ , not back living with Mom and Dad like he thought he’d be after dropping out. He was being independent. He was _adulting_. This is what adults did.

 _My room_ , he thinks whenever he catches himself staring. _I live here now. I belong here._ He’ll run his fingers along the door’s edge, thinner than his old one and with fewer splinters. His fingers will catch on the lock and he’ll jiggle it once, twice, testing its resistance—that, too, is different. _Mine_ , he tells himself.

Eventually he supposes he’ll believe it.

 

 

* * *

 

Two days after moving into his new house, Keith is woken by the sound of kids playing basketball next door. _The Fitzhughs_ , he remembers from Shiro’s note as he drags himself out of bed to go shower. So they don’t want Shiro to make noise, but they’re perfectly fine letting their grandkids or whoever play HORSE at seven in the morning on a Sunday. Noted.

At least he has nothing to do today. Rolo had given him the weekend off so he could get settled in, in a rare display of managerial generosity, or maybe as a way to say _Thanks for not complaining about my pot-smell in front of the customers for this past year_. Tomorrow he’ll have to go to work again, which means getting up early and stopping for McDonald’s before rollerskating to Martian Baby, but for now he’s a free bird. Once he’s done showering, he changes back into his pajamas and heads downstairs to make himself some ramen.

Midway through the meal Keith starts to feel restless for no particular reason. He does what anyone would do in his place: he explores the house of a man infinitely more interesting than himself.

Stifling a yawn, he pushes himself away from the kitchen table and goes wandering, cup of ramen still in hand. He wanders into the dining room first, separated from the kitchen by an archway that had probably been grandiose at one point in time. The furniture here is dark and heavy and smells like decades of dust, and something moist that should probably gross Keith out, but that he actually finds kind of charming in a way. He stops to squint at a framed picture sitting on a doily—Shiro and Matt in a one-armed embrace, smiling bright and broad at the camera. Big Ben stretches tall behind them. (He can still hear Pidge’s complaining— _Who the fuck just gets invited to a conference in London? And doesn’t take their sister with them?_ )

Next he wanders through the study, where Shiro’s academic career is on display. His undergrad diploma is hanging here, framed above the desk; it was the very first thing Keith noticed the first time he walked through the house, which, come to think of it, probably says something about Keith. Underneath it there’s the printed out anthropological article that Hunk had gotten so caught up on, and underneath that, a picture of two kids shirtless in a pool. The one with the unruly black hair and a missing arm is obviously Shiro, smiling huge at the camera. He’s got no idea who the other kid in the picture is.

The study is where Shiro’s (or Matt’s? Unclear) potted plant problem is especially apparent. He counts fourteen of them in this room alone—six are succulents, four are leafy fern-things, three are flowers, and one is a tree squeezed in the corner between two massive bookshelves. The whole room has a kind of _moist_ feel to it for this reason, and the faint dirt-smell that permeates the rest of the house is noticeably stronger. Corin/Connor sure has his work cut out for him, taking care of all these plants.

After pinching at the leaves of a fern for a few minutes, Keith moves on, into an adjacent room that he hasn’t really been through before—and pauses in the doorway.

The room he’s standing on the edge of is a living room, yes—old sofas, a coffee table that _screams_ ‘grandma’, a box television—but it seems to have been _repurposed_. All of the traditional living room-esque furniture has been pushed into one corner of the room, and the rest is crowded with a giant vintage-looking vanity, straight out of an actor’s dressing room in the 60’s. The giant mirror is lined with bare bulbs. Dozens—no, maybe _hundreds_ —of photographs are taped around it, each one displaying a different smiling face. The vanity is littered with all kinds of bottles and hair styling accessories.

What catches Keith’s eye, though, is the cushy-looking black swivel chair pushed up to the table—and, more specifically, the person currently sitting in it.

The man’s wearing a prim-looking blue coat, leaning forward and styling a red moustache in the mirror. Keith can hear him humming to himself, and before his brain can say to his legs _turn around and leave, you’re intruding on something,_ his reflection is spotted. The man gasps audibly and breaks into a grin, wide and white.

“Ah!” The chair squeals as he spins around to face Keith. “You must be the lad who just moved in.” He’s still smoothing down the edges of his mustache in quick, practiced motions. Now that he’s got a good view of him, Keith takes him in—pale skin, a square jaw, slicked hair, twin moles near the outer corners of his eyes. He’s got kind of a weird handsomeness to him, like maybe he’s some kind of indie model. Or _was_ , since he looks about forty and probably wouldn’t still be modeling at this point in life. If he ever had.

And Keith should probably introduce himself instead of just staring blankly, huh?

“Yeah. Uh.” God, he must look like a hot fucking mess right now, standing in _Goosebumps_ boxers and eating ramen out of a styrofoam cup in front of this clearly well-put-together guy. “. . . I’m Keith.”

The man claps his hands together. “Excellent. I’ve been trying to catch you, but you’re so very  _elusive_. Like a little fish.” He makes what Keith can only assume are supposed to be fish-like finger waggling motions, complete with soft _blub blub_ noises. Keith blinks.

“My name is Coran, and believe me, it’s a sincere pleasure.” The man— _Coran_ , not Connor—is out of his seat and standing in front of Keith in two long strides, looking him up and down, intense blue eyes crinkling at the corners. “Look at you. So vibrant! Those pajamas? The fearlessness of youth to self-express . . . what I woudn't give.”

In a flurry of blue Coran brushes past him to the couches. He plops down, gesturing at the armchair. “Sit, dear boy. Shiro told me you used to attend Garrison, isn’t that right? Tell me about yourself, won’t you?”

 _Wow._ Pidge didn’t warn him that this guy was so . . . _exorbitant_. Keith makes a mental note to ask her for more details about this later. For now he does as Coran asks, sitting hesitantly on the edge of the chair and setting his cup down on the coffee table.

“Um.” He purses his lips. He dpesn't really want to talk about his time at Garrison with a stranger, but he sure as fuck doesn't know how to initiate small talk. “I don’t know. I, uh, I just sort of . . . do my own thing, mostly.”

Coran folds his hands in his lap and looks at him with wide, interested eyes.

Frowning, Keith clears his throat. “I—work at a record store?” he offers.

“Ah!” Coran claps again—Keith tries and fails to not flinch at the sudden noise. “How novel. Tell me about it!”

Well, that’s easy enough—Keith’s been working at Martian Baby for a year now, and he’s got _plenty_ of shit to say about it. Coran asks him all sorts of questions about what it’s like working there, and then about Keith’s music when the conversation inevitably takes that turn. Some indiscernible amount of time later Coran holds up a finger to stop Keith in the middle of a rather awkward explanation of just what he means by _freak folk_ and pulls out his phone.

Keith leans over to see the screen, and frowns. He’s looking at a picture of a tan-skinned woman with a petite nose and overdrawn lips. Fake-looking purple bangs hang in her eyes. There’s something _off_ with the picture, too, something unplaceable . . . and as he peers into those giant eyes it suddenly becomes clear to him what, exactly, he’s looking at.

_Oh. It’s a mannequin._

““That’s—wow. Um.” Keith clears his throat.

“Her name is Altea,” Coran says, his voice thrumming with pride. “She’s been a partner and a dear friend for nearly twenty years now. She was my first client. Can you believe that? Imagine me, just a lad, hardly able to cut a straight line. So skinny I had to wrap a belt around my waist twice just to keep my trousers up. I had to stand on a stool to reach her head in those days, and it was the most dreadful thing, keeping myself balanced while I tried to style her hair. Eventually, I said, well, I might as well just take the damn thing off!” Coran winks. “So I did. Her neck’s detachable, you know.”

“She’s—she’s beautiful,” Keith says, kind of stupidly.

“In this picture? Oh, no, she’s hideous. That hairstyle— _ugh,_  the dye.What was I thinking?” Coran swipes on his phone, bringing up a new image of Altea with some complicated-looking updo. “Now in _this_ one—that’s what we call a _style_ , my boy. I daresay this is the best I’ve ever done this look.”

Alright, so he’s got a creepy mannequin, _and_ he thinks dyed hair is ugly. Pidge is definitely going to hear about this. “Um, where is she now?”

“Ah, she’s in the basement until she’s fit to greet my clients again. But, ah,” Coran hesitates, waving a hand. “Don’t worry about her, dear boy. The basement is—”

“Rats,” Keith says. “Shiro told me.”

The man looks relieved at that. “Good. Very good.” Sighing, he puts his phone back in his coat pocket. “Yes, it’s a rather old house, and it has its—quirks. Rats are one of them, I’m afraid. As is faulty wiring. But, ah, should you ever find yourself rather suddenly _in the dark_ , come and find me, my boy. I’ll see what my magic hands can do.”

The power goes out sometimes?  _Excellent._ Keith thinks, grimly, that he shouldn’t be surprised, moving into a house like this. “Have you been living here a while?” he says in lieu of complaining out loud.

“For years. Shiro is a dear friend of mine. But that’s a story for another day.” The man straightens, fixing Keith with a bright smile. “You must have important things to attend to, I’m sure of it. And I’m afraid I must prepare for my first client.” Coran gets up, but not before one final dramatic clap (this time Keith’s ready for it, and only his eye twitches in response). His grin is huge under his mustache. “Now that we’ve been acquainted, you’ll come and see me more often, won’t you, my boy? No more hiding away in that room of yours, understand?”

 _Hiding_ sticks in Keith’s mind like a burr, and he feels a pang of defensiveness—he wants to tell Coran that he hasn’t been _hiding_ , but then he realizes, yeah, that’s actually pretty much what he’s been doing for the past few days. Instead, he follows Coran’s lead and gets up, wringing his hands. “Er, yeah. Definitely.”

“Excellent. I look forward to it, lad.” In a blink, Coran’s back at his vanity, pulling supplies out of a drawer, as if he’s already moved on completely from their conversation.

Not knowing what the hell else to do with himself, Keith jets. He makes it halfway up the stairs to the attic when he realizes he forgot the rest of his ramen in Coran’s salon.

 _Goddamn it._ Well, he’s not going back down there—looks like he’s having caramel for lunch again.

* * *

 

 

Just after 1 AM that night, Keith’s in the kitchen again, leaning against the wall with a glass of milk—the first step of his usual anti-insomnia routine, although it feels a little weird to do it in an unfamiliar house.

These past few days he’s found himself looking out of windows pretty often, despite the fact that he hasn’t really left the house. It’s just nice to look at. He’s always liked this part of town—he, Hunk and Pidge used to take walks down here in the fall, back when they were all attending Garrison. A simple glance down the street reminds him why. Every single house is unique in its architecture, its colors and decorations: some of them are older Victorians, like Shiro’s, while others look more like libraries with their classical columns and square faces. There’s even a few houses on this street that look Mediterranean-inspired, all red roofs, stucco walls, arched windows. It’s a far cry from the cookie-cutter suburb that he and Hunk grew up in, that’s for damn sure.

There’s probably a lot of artsy types living around here, what with all the beautiful houses and peaceful little parks. It’s a good environment to foster creativity. Maybe one of these days he’ll head out to the park with his guitar and notebook and just—sit, and see what comes to him. He used to be able to write so easily like that, just pulling the music out of the air around him, whereas others (like Hunk) had to sit at a desk and _think_. All he needs to do is get back into his groove, and he can write something real nice—he’s sure of it. Something that’ll make Hunk and his parents stop worrying about him so much. Something that'll make this whole past year seem like . . . a necessary step in his creative development.  _Yeah._ That sounds nice.

Draining the last of his milk, Keith turns away from the window to face the rest of the kitchen. The door to the basement is shut. He reaches out and tests the knob, a bit surprised to find it’s not locked. He can hear faint noises, little scratches and shuffles, nearly muted. It makes him a little uneasy, so he moves away from the basement door, setting down his empty glass in the sink. _The rats_ , Keith tells himself as he turns on the tap. _Just the rats._

A few minutes later he’s about to leave the kitchen when he notices a bowl on the counter. Keith squints inside. It looks like . . . some kind of stew? He can see chunks of potato and beef floating in there, at least. _Is this Coran’s?_ He blinks around the darkened kitchen. _Why is he just leaving it on the counter?_

In fairness, Coran’s obviously kind of a weird man, which Keith can dig. Not like he’s one to pass judgement. Although maybe Coran had made the bowl for himself and forgotten it here, in which case Keith should probably bring it up to him—or, no, would that be weird?

 _Whatever_. _I’ll just leave it._ It’s not his job to help the old man remember his dinner. Rubbing his eyes, Keith makes his way through the first floor back to the staircase—and freezes when he hears a _crunch_ and feels something give under his socked foot.

For a moment Keith’s heart is in his throat as he moves his foot— _Oh God, did I just kill a gross bug_ —but no, when he looks it’s a wrapper. In fact, now that his attention’s on the floor. . . there’s _multiple_ wrappers on the staircase here. He counts five, actually, strewn about on the steps. _When the hell did this happen?_ He was pretty sure they weren’t here twenty minutes ago when he came downstairs. Frowning, Keith crouches and picks one up.

Heat rushes through him when he reads the name on the wrapper. His grasp tightens. _Cow Tales_. Someone’s eating his goddamn Cow Tales.

“Okay, what the _fuck_.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is a little slower than i'd like, mostly because there's a lot of place to be established. more action—specifically, the appearance of everyone's favorite living disaster, lance—is planned for the next chapter. i hope it didn't bore you. T_T stay tuned!
> 
> come hit me up on my tumblr at [ isitsomeonenew](isitsomeonenew.tumblr.com)!


	2. Looking for Paul Simon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Alarm shocks him cold. He bolts up in bed, heart suddenly in overdrive, fists twisting in his sheets. The boy continues to stare.
> 
> “What the fuck,” says Keith. His voice is hoarse from disuse and panic. “Who are you?”
> 
> The intruder frowns at this and sighs, sets the notebook back down on the dresser. He gives Keith a square look, pressing his lips together. “Nobody,” he says. “You’re dreaming.”
> 
> \--
> 
> In the weeks following the move, Keith's life gradually returns to normal. Until it doesn't.

Martian Baby Records, Keith's place of "capitalist enslavement" (as Pidge would say) for the past year, has one of those over-the-top psychedelic vibes to it. Tie-dye tapestries and lava lamps, the assortment of hand-sewn pillows behind the counter, the beaded curtain separating the break room from the rest of the store, that unshakable scent of something _leafy_. It's chasing down a nostalgia that Keith himself wasn’t born early enough to recognize. And frankly, it's inauthentic as all hell in that endeavor _—_ just Rolo doing his whole "scholar-turned-stoner" thing _—_ and Keith suspects their clientele knows this, which is why the only people that ever come to Martian Baby are people too young to have actually _lived_ through the seventies. But the place has a wayward charm to it, and a nice selection; that can't be denied, and Keith, honestly, digs it.

He digs Rolo, too, even though he’ll never admit it. The guy’s kind of a twat with his goatee and longboard and all, but he stays out of Keith’s way, which is really all Keith ever asks from anyone. Plus he’s cool with Keith bringing his guitar (named Joplin) and playing behind the counter on slow days, and he's never yelled at Pidge for bringing her pet lizard into the store. That made him an alright guy in Keith's book.

( _Plus_ , he _might’ve_ had a crush on Rolo for, like, two weeks when he first started working here. In his defense, he was a college freshman at the time who had no idea what the fuck he was doing in the city, and he was going through some thankfully short-lived phase where he was really into shaggy blonde dudes. _Nobody_ is allowed to know about this. Especially not Hunk.)

Three days after the move, Hunk and Pidge pay Martian Baby a visit at the end of Keith's shift. He smiles when he sees their faces peeking out from above the rows of records, not even giving the store's wares a cursory glance as they move straight to the counter in the back. It's cute. Hunk and Pidge always such an odd pair to behold—Hunk is big and dark, with his wire glasses and his Northface jacket, black hair pulled back into a little ponytail. He looks like a yoga instructor or the TA for some chill-ass health class or something. All  _Okay, class, now we're gonna talk about mindfulness._ And he's juxtaposed with the tiny and wild-haired Pidge, in her laughably huge glasses and fleece pajamas. Whenever Keith's added into the mix, with his windbreakers and combat boots _—_ well, they look like something out of a terrible 90's movie, honestly, and Keith wouldn't trade that for a world.

“What’s up, buttercup?” Pidge’s greeting is clipped short by a yawn. She probably just got woke up, even though it's literally like 8:30—she's an enigma like that. Still smiling, Keith leans forward against the counter.

“Hey.” His eyes flit to Pidge’s noticeably bare shoulder, where usually her favorite pet would be residing. “No lizard today, huh?”

“It’s kind of cold. Voltron needs to be soaking up artificial sun rays today, much as I hate to leave him home. _Also_ ,” she adds with a scowl, “for maybe the ten-millionth time, Voltron’s a _gecko_. Not just a 'lizard'. You sound barbaric calling him a lizard. That’s like me calling you a primate.”

“I don’t understand that,” Hunk comments, and Pidge turns her scowling face to him. “Aren’t geckos, like, tiny? Voltron’s huge.”

“He’s a giant day gecko. ‘Giant’ is literally in the name.” Pidge pinches the bridge of her nose, above her glasses. “God, I’ve said this so many times," she grumbles. "You guys both suck.”

Keith squints suspiciously at Hunk. “Hunk, don’t you have a night class right now?”

“It got cancelled. Even if it hadn’t, I’d probably have skipped out early to swing by.” Hunk’s tone turns pointed and serious, and he looks straight at Keith. “ _For the band,_ " he says, in the dramatic tone of voice he uses when he doesn't want Keith to miss a joke.

Keith, having never missed this cue ever in his life, shakes his head in pretend melancholy. “The band?”

Hunk grabs Keith by the shoulders and shakes him a little. “For the _band_ , Elwood!"

“The _band?_ ”

“The _band!_ ”

“ _Stop_ ,” Pidge complains loudly. “For God’s sake, stop being such _nerds_. You guys weren’t even alive when that fucking movie came out.”

“You still haven’t even _seen_ it.” Keith’s tone is accusatory, even as Hunk sloughs off his shoulders, laughing. “Every time I tried to make you watch it you came up with a bullshit excuse.”

“Yeah, well, maybe I don’t have time to sit through two hours of John Belushi doing cartwheels.”

“Of course you do,” Hunk says, at the exact same moment that Keith exclaims, maybe a bit too passionately, “Everyone has time for that!”

“Plus, he only cartwheels, like, twice in the whole thing,” says Hunk, turning away to go pick through records. “If anything _The Blues Brothers_ is two hours of police cruisers crashing into each other. That’s right up your alley, Pidge.”

Already ignoring him, Pidge braces herself on her elbows against the countertop. “Anyway, Keith.” The grin that crosses her face is lopsided and decidedly wicked. “How do you like living with Coran?”

“He wears cologne that kind of smells like sour bananas or something. And he keeps forgetting, like, whole plates of food in the kitchen at night.” Keith’s nose wrinkles in reflex, remembering what he found on the counter last night—a whole serving of pot roast, with green beans and everything, just sitting there for the flies. _What a waste._

“Who’s Coran?” Hunk wonders aloud, not glancing over from the discount CD rack. “That’s the New Zealand guy?”

“He’s a _New Zealander_ ,” Pidge says. “He’s not New Zealand, the country.”

“He lives across the hall from me, in the attic,” Keith says. “Honestly, he’s fine. Nice. Just kind of odd.” He still hadn’t had a ton of interactions with the man anyway—Keith wasn’t in the house much, and when he was he was usually in his room, making up chord progressions or reading. Of course, he's  _heard_ a fair amount from Coran and his occasional clients, who, if their voices are anything to go by, appear to be predominantly old women.

Pidge nods, like she expected as much. “Has he started getting ready for the garage sale yet? Probably, right?”

Keith blinks. “For the what?”

“Dude, it’s August,” Hunk says, frowning at Pidge. “Isn’t the garage sale thing in October?”

Pidge shakes her head. “Dude, if I know a damn thing about Coran, I know that he’s already pumped up and getting all his shit together. Telling random strangers his whole life story and showing off all his weird little souvenirs? That’s, like, his whole _raison d'être_.” She sniffs. “That’s how I met him, I think, technically. The first time I went to Shiro’s house during the garage sale weekend. Coran sold me a bunch of old movie posters and gave me, like, an hour’s worth of _Alien_ trivia. It fucking ruled.”

“I still don’t know what we’re talking about,” Keith says.

"Alright, so." Pidge leans forward. “Every year in October, before it gets too cold, there’s a big garage sale weekend in the neighborhood. You know, because it’s an old neighborhood and pretty much everyone has tons of cool old shit they don’t need. Shiro and Matt did it the past three years, sort of, but it’s like Coran’s _thing_. He’ll probably want you to work it, too.”

“Work it?” That sounds like making smalltalk with strangers. Not appealing. Unless he got to bring Joplin and try to do some writing, maybe. “Like, help him sell his stuff?”

“No, sell _your_ stuff. And of course you keep the money from whatever you sell. Don't you always need more cash, dude?”

Hmm. Well, Keith isn’t the type of guy to turn down an opportunity for more money. He shifts his weight, squinting at a far-off Beatles poster as he considers. “I mean, he hasn’t said anything about it.”

“He will. He definitely will. Speaking of him, uh—” She shifts. “You haven’t, like. Mentioned me to him, have you? Like, you haven’t said anything about knowing me?”

At that, Keith blinks. Pidge’s expression has turned anxious, her lip taut under her teeth. Not a look he’s used to seeing on the girl, honestly. “Uh. No, I mean, you haven’t come up?” He glances to Hunk briefly—who’s doing a bad job at pretending not to eavesdrop—and back. “But he probably knows we’re friends? I mean, he knows I used to go to Garrison, and he probably knows that you and Matt are the reason I found the house—”

“He . . . doesn’t.” Now she’s just looking downright sheepish. “He doesn’t know any of that. If he did I would know. He probably just thinks you’re friends with Shiro, somehow, and that’s how you knew about the house, so—just—don’t mention me to Coran. As if you were even going to. Okay?”

“Um.” Keith furrows his brow. Once more he looks to Hunk for some kind of lifeline. Hunk gives him his best _I don’t know, dude_ look in return. “Yeah. Sure? Alright.”

“Cool. Thanks.” Pidge drums a quick rhythm on the counter with the heels of her palms, then steps away. “I gotta get going to work. And don’t forget about the garage sale thing. Seriously, I’m gonna show up and I’m expecting you to cut me a sick deal.” The words _sick deal_ are punctuated with finger guns. Beside her, Hunk snorts.

“I don’t know what you think I have to sell,” Keith says, frowning. “I didn’t bring that much to begin with.” What he meant by that, of course, was that he didn’t bring much that he considered _expendable_. Someone might look upon his knife collection or his completed Animorphs series (including each and every one of the tertiary books because those are _essential to the reading experience_ , goddamn it) and say that he was sitting on a garage sale goldmine, but Keith wasn’t about to part with any of that shit. It had meaning.

Pidge, who knows better than to suggest to Keith that he sell some of his beloved possessions after being friends with him for two years, gives a half-hearted shrug. “Sell some of Shiro’s stuff, then.”

Keith blinks. “What?”

“Yeah, just take some of it. He’s tried to give, like, half that shit to me anyway.” She pinches her lips in thought. “Sell the postcards in the study, he doesn’t want those. And anything in the basement’s probably fair game unless it’s, like, in a box marked ‘Beloved Family Memories’ or some shit.”

Keith frowns. “That . . . seems immoral.” He glances quickly to Hunk for confirmation, who's making a face like he stepped in dog shit. “Yeah. That’s definitely immoral, Pidge.”

Pidge waves a hand, looking, to her credit, only a little deflated. “Whatever. I’m just saying, there’s bank to be made. And speaking of bank—” She checks her watch, starting to turn away. “I _really_ gotta get going, or the snake's gonna break out of his terrarium and eat everything. Catch you guys later?”

“Bye, Pidge," the brothers call in near unison. Pidge spins around, walking backwards to face them.

“By the way," she calls, stepping through the door, "it sucks that you have to rely on Hunk to tell you if something’s immoral or not. Most of us have this thing called an internal moral compass.”

" _Bye_ , Pidge," Keith repeats. She flips him off just as the automatic doors close on her, but not before Keith catches the mischievous little quirk to her mouth.  _Good old Pidge_. She's one of the few people in his life who can take as much as she can give, and Keith loves her for it.

When he looks back at Hunk, the other boy's frowning at his phone. “I need to get going, too. Got a lesson soon." Hunk looks up. "But I'll talk to you later, promise."

"Yeah." He'd ask why in the hell someone's scheduling piano lessons with Hunk so late, but he knows the answer is  _because college._

"Hey, but listen." Hunk stows his phone away, regarding Keith with a more serious look. "How're you doing? Really?"

"I'm alright, Hunk." Hunk frowns at him. "Really." The half-smile that he gives must not be very convincing, because the crease on Hunk's brow deepens rather than fades.

"You'd tell me if you needed something, right?" Hunk says, worried.

And honestly, Keith kind of wants to snap, say something like _Hunk, I'm not a kid anymore_ , point out that he'd been taking perfectly good care of himself for ten years before he even met Hunk and his parents—but he can't. He's never been able to call out Hunk for worrying about him, much as he's wanted to over the years. If Keith were interested in psychoanalyzing himself, maybe he'd say it's because there's a part of him that loves being fussed over so much—but he likes to think it's just because he doesn't want to hurt Hunk's feelings.

So he sighs, and says, "Of course, man." Hunk's face lights up a little, and Keith finds himself unable to suppress a smile, a genuine one this time, when he's roped into a quick hug over the counter. 

"That makes me feel better," Hunk says when he pulls away, exhaling. "Alright, man. I'll see you around. Love ya."

"Love you too." He does a little half-salute, and Hunk bows out dramatically, cracking a little smile before he disappears out of the store.

Keith stares at the door for a few moments, then glances at the clock on the cash register. It's almost nine—he'd better start closing up. 

 

* * *

 

When Keith gets home that night, he finds himself hit with the sudden urge to play something. It's not an urge he gets often these days, so he figures it's best not to ignore it. Passing the living room, he can hear a blowdryer running and Coran chattering away, so he tries not to make too much noise as he climbs the stairs. Once he's in his room, he tosses his rollerskates to the side and grabs his guitar, plopping down on his bed. He even puts his phone on silent, which he hardly ever does, given Hunk's predisposition towards randomly calling him during the day.

Once he gets to playing, he loses track of the hours easily; every time he glances at his alarm clock he's a little surprised to find ten minutes, twenty minutes, a half hour has passed since he last checked. It's always that way when Keith's in what Hunk refers to as "the zone" (or in other words, when Keith is focused to the point of forgetting his other responsibilities, his need for things such as food and sleep, and his own name _—_ once Hunk started reading  _The Canterbury Tales_ to him when he was like that, and Keith didn't even realize Hunk was speaking until "The Knight's Tale"). Thus, some time later when Keith finally registers that someone's knocking on his door, he realizes it's quite possible that they've been knocking for a while.

(Pidge calls that  _hyper-focusing_. "It's because your brain can't let go of what it's interested in," she says. "It's an autistic thing." To Keith, it's more accurately a "write a whole album in a day and forget to do your homework" thing.)

Keith mutes Joplin's still-singing strings with the palm of his hand. “It’s unlocked," he calls. The door creaks open carefully, and Coran's new-penny-colored head pops into view. Immediately Keith smells warm chocolate and sugar, and when his housemate steps into the room further he realizes why: Coran's carrying a big blue platter of cookies, and smiling his blinding white smile.

“Care for a snack, my boy? I thought your fingers might require some reprieve.”

“Uh.” Keith shifts, craning his neck when Coran holds out the plate to him. He sets his guitar down flat in his lap, reaching to take a cookie. “Yeah, okay. Thanks.”

Coran returns to his soldier-straight posture. He looks almost like a butler or something, between the platter, the mustache, and the nice coat. “How are you finding the house? I hope Shiro gave you sufficient warning about the state of the wiring around here . . . "

“No, it’s—fine. I like it. The house.” Much to his surprise, Keith hasn't had any real issues with power yet, except maybe a few times when the bathroom light flickered a little while he was in the shower.  _The bigger issue is my shit-kicking Cow Tales_ , he thinks bitterly. He'd found  _two more wrappers_ on the staircase leading up to the attic yesterday after work, and yes, he was absolutely still pissy about it. That was _—_ what, seven wrappers total, now? Seven Cow Tales he paid actual real money for and hadn't even gotten to eat?

Whatever. It's not really that big of a deal, anyway.  _Except that they're my god damn favorite candy on Earth._

“Ah, that's very good! Settling in alright, then, are we? I’ve been seeing more of you up and around.”

Keith frowns at Coran, taking a bite of his cookie before responding. It's _—_ good, almost as good as the cookies Hunk used to make. He shouldn't be surprised that Coran can bake, honestly. That seems to suit him. Somehow. “Yeah, no, it’s fine.” _You’re getting crumbs in your bed, idiot._ He swallows. “I’m settling in fine.”

Coran smiles. Then, he gestures to Keith’s record collection on the bottom shelf of his bookcase. “May I look?”

Keith blinks. “Uh, sure. Go ahead.”

The plate of cookies _clinks_ against the floor as Coran sets it down, sitting cross-legged on the floor. He goes through the collection of records delicately, taking the time to look over each one, even the ambient noise records that most people found boring. Keith watches him for a few seconds before picking his guitar up once more. His fingers form a few chords, picking out formless patterns on the strings, chasing down the string of inspiration that he'd had earlier. Frankly, it's a little harder to get lost when someone else is in the room.

“Do you like caramel?” Keith asks after a few minutes of heartless noodling, and immediately wants to slap himself.  _What the_ fuck _, Keith._

Coran, for his part, doesn’t seem to find the question odd at all. He’s squinting at one of Keith’s 45s. “Not terribly fond of it, I’m afraid. Why?”

“Uh. Nothing. Just wondering.” _So it's not Coran._ Not that Keith genuinely suspected him anyway—Coran's weird, sure, but he doesn't at all seem like the kind of person who'd take someone else's food without asking. Could it be the rats, then? Are they in the attic, too? Surely Shiro would've warned him if that was the case?

He almost wants to ask, but, no. Coran doesn't need to hear about Keith's Cow Tale problems. Instead, he elects to change the subject, strumming a few strings idly. “Uh, so, I heard that there’s a—a garage sale, or something, later in the fall?”

“Ah! Yes.” Coran claps excitably. Keith twitches at the sound and nearly drops his pick. “It’s an annual tradition in this neighborhood. I’d love for you to participate, my boy. If you haven’t anything of your own to sell, you’re welcome to take some of my things. It’s the least I can do!”

 _That_ makes Keith pause. Did Pidge call it? “Is it . . . moral to sell something that isn’t yours?”

“In a garage sale? Yes, I’d imagine so.” The man's eyes twinkle with amusement, and maybe something distant and fond. “I’ve even sold some of Shiro’s old trinkets that he doesn’t want anymore. Lord knows the boy’s got enough useless junk lying around.” Shifting, Keith looks back down at his hands, watching their movements up and down the neck of his guitar _—_ until Coran speaks again. “Ah, I didn’t have you figured for a fan of old folk.”

Keith glances up briefly to see Coran examining his old copy of _Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme_. A former staple of his dad’s collection, gifted to Keith when he left for Garrison. “Oh. Uh, yeah. I’m a fan.” He scratches his chin, feeling at once sheepish and bizarrely defensive with someone else looking at his things. “Simon and Garfunkel was, uh, a big thing in my family. Is,” he corrects himself.

The man gives an appreciative hum, flipping the record over in his hands to look at the track list. “I’ve seen them in concert twice. Once in Liverpool, and again in Salt Lake City, here in the States.” His blue eyes crinkle at the corners when they meet Keith’s. “I was a first tenor in my younger days, you know. A regular Art Garfunkel of my own, I'd like to imagine. Though I’m afraid I never quite found my Paul.”

 _Aren’t we all just looking for our Pauls?_ Keith thinks, and doesn’t say this stupid faux-deep thing out loud in a rare display of impulse control. Instead he frowns down at Joplin, still trying to process what he’s just heard. Is Coran telling him he’s been alone his whole life, or just that he’s never found a duet partner? He'd said it so cheerfully, Keith has a hard time imagining it’s the former.

Eventually he just goes with, “Well, the whole duo thing didn’t work out really well for them, in the end, so maybe you were better off staying solo.”

Coran chuckles. “Perhaps you’re right. In any event, I should hope you won’t be selling _this_. If you're ever bored with it, hand it off to me.” He sets the record down again, and straightens his back, fixing Keith with an interested look. “You’re not a tenor, yourself. You must be a baritone, yes? I have to imagine you sing.”

“Uh. Yeah, actually.” Could he tell just by Keith's speaking voice? “I haven’t sang in a choir since I was in high school.”

“Ah. You didn’t sing at Garrison, then?”

Keith frowns. “No.”  _Here it comes._

Coran pauses, appearing to consider his next words cautiously. “Would it be terribly rude of me to ask what happened?”

 _Well._ At least he had the foresight to ask politely. Keith rubs the back of his neck. “I, um. I dropped out. It wasn’t for me.” He feels oddly compelled to explain, and before he can stop himself he’s sweeping on, gaze fixed stubbornly on the shoebox before him. “It wasn’t about the grades—I mean, I was always really good at school. It was just.” _Too easy_. No, he can’t say that. “It wasn’t a good fit for me. I couldn’t do what I wanted, and it—just didn’t feel like there was a point to it.”

He chances a glance up at Coran. The man’s expression is soft, the planes of his cheeks creased by something barely there. Keith feels at ease enough to continue: “My brother Hunk still goes there, and he’s doing well in his classes. He’s a musician too, but he’d rather write scores, not songs. I guess he’s just more—he’s more made for the whole structured college thing than me. I’d rather do my own thing.”

“Ah, yes. I do get that impression from you.” Keith, embarrassingly, searches Coran's face for something mocking or disapproving, but he finds nothing there but warmth. “I suppose I should leave you to it, then. Never keep a musician from his instrument. That's what an old friend of mine used to say, anyway." He stands, picking up the platter of cookies once more, giving Keith an amiable nod of the head before turning to leave.

Keith hesitates. “Coran?”

Coran stops a moment, glancing back. “Yes, my boy?”

For a moment he thinks about asking him about Pidge, just for shits—but when he opens his mouth, to his surprise, something else comes out. “Thanks. For, uh, the cookie, and.” He pauses, feeling a little silly. “Everything.”

The man smiles wide. "Any time at all, Keith."

 

* * *

 

Shiro's basement is unfinished and borders on labyrinthine. It’s brown and massive, with walls streaked by a long history of leaks, and populated with more cardboard boxes and plastic bins than Keith’s maybe ever seen in his life. He supposes that's pretty standard, as far as basements go, but he can't help wondering why in the world a graduate student who lives on his own could possibly need so much  _stuff_.

Probably he shouldn't be down here. He should, most likely, not be taking Pidge's advice to heart. He should not have considered what Coran said earlier about selling other people's things as taciturn permission to go rummaging through Shiro's basement in search of valuable-looking junk; nor should he, realistically, be thinking about how Rolo always cheats him out of hours around Halloween, and he'll probably be short on cash when the garage sale rolls around, and he'll be sorely needing whatever he can scrape together. Unfortunately, Keith has always been good at doing what he's not supposed to do—and so here he is, standing at the bottom of the basement stairs and staring around at all the mess, wondering where in the hell he could possibly start.

He’s only just located the light switch when his ringer goes off, making him flinch. When he checks his phone, the name that pops up doesn't exactly surprise him.  _H_ _unk_. Of course he would call Keith less than five hours after seeing him in person.

With a sigh, Keith takes the call, pausing to lean against the drywall for a moment. “Hey, man.”

“Hey, Keith.” Hunk’s voice is a bit staticy over the phone, likely due to Keith being subterranean. “What’s up? You busy?”

“Nope. Why are you calling? We just saw each other.”

“Because I need to give you the ‘concerned brother’ shtick that you dodged earlier. You're lucky I didn't do it in front of Pidge.” Keith doesn’t even have a chance to groan before Hunk’s firing off with the questions, sounding (to his credit) only a little anxious. “So how’s the house? How’ve you been eating? Nothing’s breaking yet, right?”

Now Keith _does_ groan, loud and dramatic. “Hunk, it’s been three days. You can’t be worrying about me this much yet.”

“Too late. _Ring, ring!_ ” Hunk’s impression of a phone ringing is less of an impression and more just him shouting _ring, ring_ in a high-pitched voice. “Who’s that on my other line? Oh—it’s my _brotherly love_ for you, calling in to say that I’m allowed to worry about you as much as I want, whenever I want, because I’m your brother and I love you.”

Keith pushes off the wall. “Christ. You’re such a worrywart.”

“Better than a furry fart,” Hunk says immediately.

“Stop it,” Keith says, and it’s supposed to be threatening but his involuntary smile warps his words. “Shut up. That wasn’t funny when Dad said it and it’s not funny when you say it.” Damn it, Hunk knows he’s weak to goofiness.

Even a phone line away, Hunk's smugness is almost palpable. _Damn him_. “Fine. I guess I can take the fact that you’re still alive as evidence that you’re eating okay, so I’ll drop it. You been working on anything new? Mom keeps asking if you're writing, like, a secret album or something.”

“Mmm. Not really. Just messing around, mostly." Now that he's looking closely, there seems to be something resembling a path through the boxes. Maybe there's a method to the madness after all.

“Well. You got a lot of creative inspiration in that house, that’s for sure.” Hunk's got that thoughtful tone of voice he always gets when he's talking about Keith's music. “You could, like . . . write a song about a dude who travels around the world, and stuff.”

Keith hums in response, focusing, for the moment, more on navigation than anything else. God, it’s a minefield down here, with all the boxes and lids sticking out at odd angles. No wonder they have an unsolved pest problem. It's a good thing Keith is limber as a cat, or he'd be scraping his legs bloody on all the serrated cardboard edges. 

“Or,” Hunk is saying now, “you could write a song about a dude who travels around the world to hunt _aliens_.”

“More my style,” Keith says. He steps carefully around a box labelled “Christmas Lights”. Something brown on the floor catches his eye, and he flinches away in disgust when he realizes what he’s looking at—a mostly-gone sandwich sitting on a napkin, dotted with ants and flecks of mayonnaise. “Ugh. What the fuck?”

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing. It’s just—” He nudges the sandwich with the toe of his boot, nose wrinkled. “I’m in the basement. There’s, like, half-eaten food down here. It’s gross.”

Hunk pauses. “Aren't you not supposed to go down there? The rats?”

Keith sighs. “Hunk, again, I can handle _rats_.” If anything will kill him, it'll be dust inhalation. Or asbestos. (Wisely, he doesn't say this to Hunk.)

“You’re not taking Pidge’s suggestion of selling Shiro’s stuff, are you?”

Keith shifts the phone from one hand to the other. “Nope.” His eyes bounce from box to box, reading the labels. _Halloween decorations, dining room set, China plates . . ._ Something dark and wooden-looking peeks out at him from around a corner. It's a different container than all the cardboard boxes, at least, which is sort of promising. Keith picks his way over there with an excruciating amount of care, watching the placement of each footstep.

It's a crate of some sort, stained yet sturdy, sitting (quite conspicuously, Keith thinks) all on its own. It almost looks like it belongs on a ship or something. Keith frowns at it. Where did Shiro even get a box like that?  _Why is this guy so goddamn interesting?_

“You know you shouldn’t be going through his shit,” Hunk scolds over the phone.

“Probably,” Keith says, kneeling and pulling the crate close. He balances his phone between his shoulder and his ear, freeing up his hands to pry off the lid. The moment he does he’s assaulted with the heavy stench of must and mold. Keith reflexively covers his nose with the sleeve of his hoodie and squints, trying to make sense of what he’s looking at.

Most of it looks like useless shit—dust-coated objects that Keith figures must’ve been important to somebody once, but have since lived past the point of being meaningful. There’s a few empty picture frames, chipped around the edges like they’ve been dropped a time or two, and a little ceramic figurine of a ballerina that looks like it was once attached to a music box or something. He reaches in, shifting shit around and stirring up dust, until his fingers skirt something hard and smooth.

 _Jackpot. Maybe._ It’s a jewelry box, brown and monolithic. Keith pops it open—it’s empty, of course, but still _._ Not particularly opulent or anything, but it’s old, which (according to Keith’s admittedly rudimentary knowledge of how garage sales work) will probably make it more appealing. Turning it over in his hands, Keith notes a worn inscription on the bottom of the letters “M. S.” and a date that he can’t quite make out.

 _Hmmm._ The “S” could maybe stand for “Shirogane”—but this probably isn’t Shiro’s box, and Keith can’t imagine why Shiro would be holding onto something that belonged to a family member. Plus, if it belonged to someone in Shiro’s family, it’d probably be “S. M.”, because it’s Japanese, right? Or it’d just be written with Japanese characters, not English ones.

Maybe he bought it at a garage sale himself. He clearly doesn’t care much about it, if it’s sitting in this crate swimming in dust.

“Keith? You still there?”

Hunk’s voice makes him twitch. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, I got distracted looking at shit.” He runs a finger along the edge of the jewelry box, then glances back to the rest of the stuff in the crate. _There's got to be something else in there that's worth something._  “There’s some cool stuff down here, y’know.”

Hunk is silent for a beat, and Keith can almost feel waves of confliction through the phone. But he knows Hunk, and how much Hunk loves a good harmless invasion of other people’s privacy, even if he swears he’s too civil for it. When he speaks again, it’s with resignation. “ _Fine_ , you got me, I'm curious. What kind of cool stuff?”

Keith smirks, pushing aside some crumpled-up paper. “Oh, you know. Some picture frames, an engraved jewelry box that’s probably worth a hundred dollars or something . . . ” A movement, quick and dark along the edge of his vision, cuts off his words. Keith recoils so fast he almost loses balance. “Fuck. Shit. I think I just saw a rat.”

“Go upstairs,” Hunk urges.

“Yeah.” Keith jumps up to leave, jewelry box in one hand—stops, reconsiders, and decides to take the whole crate instead. He hasn’t looked at everything in there yet. Maybe there’s something else in there that’ll be valuable. With a heave, he hoists the crate up onto his shoulder and makes his way back to the staircase, careful not to trip on anything in his haste to avoid getting attacked by rodents.

“Write a song about a boy who gets devoured by rats in his landlord’s basement,” Hunk suggests once Keith's at the top of the stairs, and he laughs from the belly when Keith bitches him out.

 

* * *

 

Late that night he spends a little more time going through that crate. To his disappointment, there's not much else in there that's terribly compelling, other than the jewelry box and a relatively undamaged picture frame that's sort of, maybe, pretty. It's not much, but it'll at least be better than just selling his pins from work. Sighing, Keith puts everything back and closes the crate carefully, then leans over the edge of his bed to slide it under.

He should go to sleep now, probably. He's got to open Martian Baby tomorrow. Still, when he slides off the bed and moves over to his dresser, it's not to take out his pajamas _—_ instead, he grabs his notebook of writing and opens it, reading as he makes his way back to his bed.

The first page, predictably, holds the first song Keith ever wrote. Reading it now as an adult he's not sure if he should be more embarrassed by his handwriting or his forced rhyming. To his credit, he'd been a sixth grader at the time, living with an adoptive family that didn't want him or his music in the house, unlike Hunk's family. All that considered, the song wasn't really all that bad _—_ just horribly, pointlessly sad.

Keith thumbs forward another few pages, skating through the end of middle school and into his freshman year of high school. These songs were significantly less self-deprecating—that whole style of writing had fallen out of the mainstream interest by then. The first three songs Keith had written that year weren’t about himself at all; instead, they were about things like nature, his favorite park in their old neighborhood, the way it felt to stand in the sun after lying in a cold bedroom for hours. Freshman-in-high-school-Keith had sworn off strict rhyme schemes and started to play around with internal rhyming and slants. None of it was exactly  _good_ , but he had at least been trying to distinguish himself, if nothing else.

He turns the page. Now he's in his senior year, where he’d spent more time reading Yusef Komunyakaa and Sharon Olds than working on his assignments, but had still managed to churn out A’s and A-’s anyway; that was the year he’d memorized over one hundred lines of _Things I Didn’t Know I Loved_ , and forever resigned himself to silently reciting his favorite verse whenever the stars were particularly visible at night (“ _I have some questions for the cosmonauts_ ” _—_ just the first line made Keith feel thirsty for the empty lull of space, something he’d never even experienced before). That was the year he found out he’d be valedictorian, and that he’d have to give a speech at his graduation, and that, no, his speech couldn’t just be him saying _Fuck all of you_ and walking off the stage. That was the year that Keith ended up not going to his graduation ceremony at all.

The Garrison years are next, and honestly, Keith often skips these fifteen or so pages when he goes through his notebook. Twice on the first page he almost stops reading, but each time he wants to he forces himself to refocus, his eyes stubbornly absorbing every word. Much as he wants to act like everything about Garrison was terrible, he knows, objectively, that his first year had been a good one for writing. That’s when wrote “I’ll Wait”, which Hunk swears is his favorite of Keith’s songs (and he thinks it’s about a crush, bless his heart; Keith doesn’t have the heart to tell him that it’s really just a song he wrote about Mothman when he was drunk). All his songs from this time were concisely written, heavy on alliteration and wordplay, clearly influenced by his growing interest in the conventions of poetry. He was still proud of some of the lines he’d come up with.

On and on Keith reads, and relives, until his eyes start to feel heavy _—_ then he reads more. He falls asleep like that, somewhere between his first year of college and the summer after, the half-finished lyrics and mismatched chords working themselves into a pleasantly senseless lather of dreams. His lamp burns away on the bedside table.

 

* * *

 

Hours later, when Keith wakes up, it’s a slow and imprecise thing. His eyes are open and he’s gazing at the slope of his ceiling for a while before his brain starts producing coherent thoughts, such as _it’s kind of cold in here_ and _there's a little spider on the ceiling I didn't notice before_ and _am I awake or am I still dreaming?_

Lazily, Keith turns his head to the side, looking out at the rest of his bedroom. There’s a boy standing in front of him, half-turned away, his silhouette dimly illuminated by the fuzzy glow of the lamp. Keith looks at him for a few moments, processing. He doesn’t recognize him—his features are a bit hard to make out, but Keith can see a sloping nose and a sharp jaw, and bits of dark hair poking out from under what appears to be a backwards baseball cap. The button-down shirt he wears is almost comically too big for him, pooling at the elbows, the hem resting against the boy’s thigh. Keith’s eyes travel down—he's wearing grey sweatpants, Keith notes, and no shoes, which is kind of gross considering how dirty the floor is up here. His toenails are painted blue.

 _He’s cute,_ Keith thinks blearily, his gaze wandering back up to the boy’s face. Sure, the guy’s dressed sort of weird—usually Keith’s into guys who dress nicely—but from what Keith can tell he’s got great features, which is infinitely more important. Usually he doesn’t dream about cute boys whatsoever, so this is a pleasant surprise. Though he can’t help thinking that it’d be better if the boy was, you know. In bed with him or something. Watching a boy stand around isn’t really an exciting thing to dream about.

Then he realizes the boy's got something in his hands, and a moment later, it registers that that  _something_ is Keith's notebook.  _Huh._ Did he put it back on the dresser before falling asleep? He can't remember now. Brow creasing, Keith glances at the boy's eyes—they’re small and black in the low light, and they travel across the page slowly, likely tripping up over Keith’s scraggly handwriting. Eventually those eyes reach the end of the page, and the boy sniffles quietly and flips to the next one.

Before Keith can start thinking too hard about it, the intruder decides to glance over at the bed. Then he does a double take, his hand freezing mid-page turn when he sees that Keith’s looking at him. Keith notes some new facts about the boy's face now that it's fully illuminated by the lamp, like how thin and well-manicured his eyebrows are, or the fact that his eyes might actually be dark blue, not black. Their gazes lock together, and Keith feels a distant tingling sensation, somewhere in the back of his brain. 

After several moments of mutual staring, it occurs to Keith that he might not actually be dreaming right now.

Alarm shocks him cold. He bolts up in bed, heart suddenly in overdrive, fists twisting in his sheets. The boy continues to stare.

“What the fuck,” says Keith. His voice is hoarse from disuse and panic. “Who are you?”

The intruder frowns at this and sighs, sets the notebook back down on the dresser. He gives Keith a square look, pressing his lips together. “Nobody,” he says. “You’re dreaming.”

Then the lamp goes out, and the boy's gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2, finally done. woo!
> 
> i did warn ya'll this would be slow burn........ it'll get gayer i promise. keith will get answers. i swear it.
> 
> also i love coran to pieces in case u couldn't tell! he never gets enough screentime in fics.... i'm probably going to feature him enough in this to single-handedly make up for all the fics where he's not mentioned lol
> 
> in case anyone's wondering, keith's favorite poem in this (also my favorite poem irl) which i imagine he's memorized all 120+ lines of is "things i didn't know i loved" by nâzim hikmet and if u haven't read it, [ go do it](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/things-i-didnt-know-i-loved)! i love it so much T_T
> 
> chapter 3 is like, half written, so i don't think it'll take too terribly long to post. i can't really adhere to a strict updating schedule, unfortunately, on account of being in college and not having my life together..... sorry orz

**Author's Note:**

> hello friends! thanks for reading this far! C:
> 
>  
> 
> here's a few things ya'll might like to know:
> 
> 1) as the tag suggests, this is kind of inspired by the works of bryan lee o'malley—mostly his graphic novel _seconds_ , but also kinda the _scott pilgrim_ series i guess?
> 
> 2) there might be sexual jokes/references in this fic, but there won't be any smut! the current rating is for language and general crassness. if it goes up in future chapters it will likely be for violence
> 
> 3) idk how long this is gonna be or where exactly it's gonna go or what exactly i'm doing but it's ok lol
> 
>  
> 
> let me know your thoughts—this is the first fic i've written for voltron (not the first fic i've ever written tho!) so i'd love to hear what you think about it. it's also unbeta'd so feel free to let me know if there are any glaring mistakes i've missed orz
> 
> also come tell me your headcanons and cry about our space children with me on my tumblr, [isitsomeonenew!](www.isitsomeonenew.tumblr.com)


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